Foil

Character Role Analysis

Hulga and Manley

Hulga and Manley foil each other in some important ways. They both claim to believe in nothing, yet seem to actually believe in quite a few things; and they both seem to think they are smarter than others, but only Manley proves it by fooling everybody on Mrs. Hopewell's farm. Both of them are also trying to create an identity for themselves as "different" from the world around them.

Yet at the end of the story Manley seems freer than he was before, and—at least partly by comparison—Hulga seems even more trapped. But perhaps they are both even more isolated from the rest of the human race than they were before they met.